So I caught the tail end of this while flipping thru the RSNs; UVM lost by a point with the coach screaming for a foul at the buzzer. I hadn't realized the Cats weren't still D2 in sports besides hockey.
Didn't they make the tourney last year?
Yup, they made the Big Dance for the first time and had the honor of getting stomped on by Arizona, 80-51. It was huge news here in Burlington. Nobody had any delusions about the outcome but the locals were pretty psyched anyway. It was a true case of "just happy to be here."
QuoteChristine Quinn '94 wrote:
stomped on by Arizona, 80-51.
IIRC that's better than we did against Arizona in our last NC$$ squeakball tourney appearance.
QuoteJohn T. Whelan '91 wrote:
QuoteChristine Quinn '94 wrote:
stomped on by Arizona, 80-51.
IIRC that's better than we did against Arizona in our last NC$$ squeakball tourney appearance.
I
IRC, it was 90-50 in 1988.
Post Edited (11-30-03 15:56)
Grounds for optimism, though...although they lost by a pretty wide margin, Cornell stayed with Georgia Tech for a pretty long time, and Georgia Tech went on to beat #1 UConn. People around the team seemed pretty excited about their prospects this year.
I also saw the Vermont-UCLA end-of-game incident on SportsCenter...if it hadn't been UCLA, I think the Vermont guy gets a trip to the foul line.
Did they say why UVM didn't call timeout? The FSW guys seemed to think they had a TO left, and they boxed out under their own net with about 4 seconds left.
Tech also took out Bobby Knight's #25 Texas Tech team to win the pre-season NIT.
Also, it looks like we head to Vermont next Friday to take on the Catamounts ourselves.
Quotecanucksfan wrote:
Grounds for optimism, though...although they lost by a pretty wide margin, Cornell stayed with Georgia Tech for a pretty long time, and Georgia Tech went on to beat #1 UConn. People around the team seemed pretty excited about their prospects this year.
Well, for comparison, Yale was *leading* UConn by 3 at the half before losing 70-60, so I wouldn't get too excited just yet...
[Q]Also, it looks like we head to Vermont next Friday to take on the Catamounts ourselves.[/Q]
Heh. They can stay at my house. I'll be in Ithaca for the Hahvahd/Brown games. :-)
Wasn't the AZ loss our only appearance in the NCAA tourny? (I don't know about the NIT).
QuoteGreg Berge '85 wrote:
Wasn't the AZ loss our only appearance in the NCAA tourny? (I don't know about the NIT).
Cornell also made the NCAA tournament in 1954. We got a first round bye, lost to Navy in the second round and then lost to NC State in the regional consy. (Both Navy and NC State lost to eventual champion La Salle.
I think the NIT was still the big game in town back then, though. And Cornell never went to the NIT. This site has good tourney data on all the Ivy teams: http://www.historyofcollegebasketball.com/confs/ivy.htm
big red apple writes
QuoteQuoteGreg Berge '85 wrote:
Wasn't the AZ loss our only appearance in the NCAA tourny? (I don't know about the NIT).
Cornell also made the NCAA tournament in 1954. We got a first round bye, lost to Navy in the second round and then lost to NC State in the regional consy. (Both Navy and NC State lost to eventual champion La Salle.
The 1954 team was probably the best Cornell team of the modern era,
featuring the great Lee Morton and a young Chuck Rolles.
Making it to the tournament involved one of the highlight games in all of
Cornell athletics. Cornell and Princeton had tied for the regular season
title, and there was a playoff at the Penn Palestra. Late in a tense game
with the score tied, Cornell held the ball for several minutes, playing for
the last shot (there are some things to be said for the absence of a shot
clock). On a broken play, Henry Buncom sank a long hook shot in the final
seconds to win the game 46-44. I was glued to the radio for that game,
and it's one I'll always remember.
Buncom was one of two Ithaca players on that Cornell team (from the
excellent IHS teams of a few years earlier) but probably wouldn't have
been in the game at that point if Jack Sheehy, one of the top players,
hadn't been on academic probation the second term.
The first round bye for the Ivy champion back then shows how much things
have changed. It's also worth noting that we lost to Navy by only 2 points
and then played NC State tough in the consolations.